Significance

Pair bonds are universal in human societies and distinguish us from our closest living relatives. They characteristically involve men’s proprietary claims over women—mate guarding—which in animals generally is both predicted and observed to be more frequent when sex ratios in the fertile ages are male-biased. A marked male bias in the fertile ages evolved in our lineage as longevity increased without an extension of female fertility. We compare the sex-ratio shift in simulations of the grandmother hypothesis to demographic data from chimpanzees and human hunter–gatherers then connect the expanded proportions of older men to benefits for mate guarding, the evolution of pair bonds, and the long recognized importance of male alliances in human social life.

Abstract

The evolution of distinctively human life history and social organization is generally attributed to paternal provisioning based on pair bonds. Here we develop an alternative argument that connects the evolution of human pair bonds to the male-biased mating sex ratios that accompanied the evolution of human life history. We simulate an agent-based model of the grandmother hypothesis, compare simulated sex ratios to data on great apes and human hunter–gatherers, and note associations between a preponderance of males and mate guarding across taxa. Then we explore a recent model that highlights the importance of mating sex ratios for differences between birds and mammals and conclude that lessons for human evolution cannot ignore mammalian reproductive constraints. In contradiction to our claim that male-biased sex ratios are characteristically human, female-biased ratios are reported in some populations. We consider the likelihood that fertile men are undercounted and conclude that the mate-guarding hypothesis for human pair bonds gains strength from explicit links with our grandmothering life history.

Footnotes

Author contributions: J.E.C. and K.H. designed research; J.E.C. and P.S.K. performed research; J.S.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.E.C. and P.S.K. analyzed data; and J.E.C., P.S.K., and K.H. wrote the paper.

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